


Agent Carter and the Undiscovered Country

by onethingconstant



Series: Agent Carter Forever [5]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Black Panther (2018), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Awesome Peggy Carter, BAMF Peggy Carter, Espionage, F/M, Family History, Grief/Mourning, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Nobody is coping, Peggy Fixes Infinity War, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Queen Shuri, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Steve Rogers is Not Coping, Technically major character death, but it happens before the story begins, i mean you saw that movie, spoilers if you haven't seen it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 02:33:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onethingconstant/pseuds/onethingconstant
Summary: Peggy Carter arrives in a Wakanda that is deep in mourning and even more deeply suspicious of outsiders. With no time to waste, she must convince the grieving Queen Shuri to allow her to repair Wakanda's greatest remaining weapon and deploy it before the nation ceases to exist.And the weapon itself?“Steve? Darling, I'm home.”





	Agent Carter and the Undiscovered Country

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo this is happening! I've had this story in my head since I first saw IW, but it took me this long to work out the fine detail of the larger plotline. If you haven't seen the movie and you care about spoilers, this is your last warning because THIS STORY IS ABOUT PEGGY FIXING THE THING. 
> 
> I've got the second chapter planned out and will probably post tomorrow or the day after, once I get it written.
> 
> This story takes place in the same continuity as BOTH my Agent Carter series AND my "Wolves and Women" one-shot, where Bucky and Shuri become buddies. So while it's not going to be super explicit, Shuri is dealing with the loss of not one but two brothers while oh, yeah, preparing to become Queen of Wakanda.

It was raining in Wakanda. 

It was raining even by Wakandan standards. 

The average annual rainfall in Wakanda was somewhere around 1,800 millimeters. This storm promised to put the year well above average. It had been raining for two days, great swooping sheets interrupted by lighter whispering showers. Water dripped from every leaf and eyelash. The rivers growled their complaints. In the forest dens, the sacred panthers curled around empty bellies to await more favorable hunting conditions. 

_The sky is weeping with us,_ thought Shuri as she gazed out the window at the streaming statue of Bast. 

“My Queen?”

Shuri turned and arched an eyebrow at Okoye. “Really?” she asked wearily.

Okoye stiffened as she realized what she'd said, but planted her feet and doubled down anyway. “It is who you are,” she said. 

“I have not yet completed the challenge,” Shuri reminded her.

“You will.” 

“What if I don't _want_ to?” she snarled. 

Okoye's face softened by a fraction too small to be noticed by anyone who had not grown up in her shadow. 

“It is what Wakanda needs of you,” she said, “and I know you'll rise to the occasion.” 

Shuri turned back to the window. “What do you want?”

“The Border Tribe has taken a prisoner. An intruder, attempting to enter Wakanda under the cover of the storm.” 

Shuri snorted. “Then the Border Tribe has caught an idiot. Why are you bothering me with this?”

“She carries your grandmother's pendant.” 

Shuri frowned at the rain. “The one she lost?”

“She did not lose it.” 

Shuri shot a narrow look back at Okoye. “What does this intruder want?”

“She asked to speak to the King.”

*

One third of the seats in the great council were empty.

Properly, it should have been half. Half the _members_ of the council were gone, vanished in a snap of Thanos's fingers. In the week since, however, a few had been replaced—by widows and widowers, in some cases, by lower-ranking clan elders in others, and in one or two cases by overly ambitious younger survivors whom Shuri had already stopped listening to. There were murmurs that those who still lived had been spared for a greater purpose, and those who believed such fables were invariably not worth hearing. Shuri was a scientist; she understood the siren song of false patterns in random data, and she knew better than to let it invade her ears. 

And if ever she _were_ to be so tempted, all she would have to do would be to look at the self-proclaimed chosen one and wonder: _Why would Bast choose to spare you, and not T'Challa?_

Shuri strode into the council chamber, dressed in funereal black and draped with a scarf in the sunset colors of the royal family. Best to remind everyone whom they were dealing with. She entered to bowed heads and crossed arms, and she returned the gestures solemnly as she walked to her chair and seated herself. First among equals. 

The business of the day was brief and dull as long as she didn't think about it: arrangements for the memorial ceremony were well underway, and the lists of the dead and vanished were still being updated as reports came in from outlying regions, but there was nothing of note. The rain hissing against the windows was of greater consequence than anything anybody had to say. Twenty minutes, and she knew there was no use in delaying. 

She nodded to Okoye, and the Dora slammed the butt of her spear into the floor. 

The doors swung open. 

In the doorway stood two Dora, their spears at the ready and their eyes locked on their prisoner. Between them stood a white woman, her arms bound behind her back, her brown hair still damp from the storm. Her eyes were dark and clear, her lips stained with the remnants of crimson lipstick. She wore mud-spattered jeans, scuffed brown boots, and a dark blue leather jacket over a black T-shirt. There was a gleam of silver at her sternum: a delicate necklace, its pendant in the shape of a star. 

“That is not my grandmother's,” Shuri said, nodding at the jewelry. 

The white woman's eyes widened, just slightly. 

“She was not wearing the late queen's pendant,” said Ayo, who was standing on the woman's left. “She had it hidden.” She glanced at her partner, Aneka, and then stepped forward, holding out her fist and opening it as she approached the throne. 

“Hidden,” the white woman said dryly as the vibranium chain and cat's-head pendant fell to dangle from Ayo's fingers. “It was in a _pocket_. That's not hidden, that's keeping it out of the wet.” Her accent was sharp and unmistakably British. 

Shuri frowned and accepted the piece from Ayo. It was beautiful workmanship, as all Wakandan jewelry was, but there was something particularly delicate in the lines of the panther's head, the curve of its slightly bared teeth. 

“Who here can tell me of this object?” Shuri asked, holding the necklace aloft.

The white woman opened her mouth.

“Not you,” Shuri said sharply.

The white woman closed her mouth. 

On the fringes of the circle, an old woman creaked to her feet with the aid of a heavy stick, the white scarf over her hair swaying with her unsteady movement. 

“Mbali?” Shuri said politely. 

“My queen,” Mbali began, and Shuri had to suppress a flinch at the unexpected title. “Many years ago, I was a handmaiden to your grandmother when she left the Dora to marry King Azzuri.” 

Shuri nodded. While kings were not required to take wives from among the Dora Milaje, it was more common than not. 

“May I see the pendant?”

Shuri held it out. 

Mbali hobbled over, leaning on her stick, and cupped the dangling pendant in her gnarled fingers. She squinted at it. 

“Yes,” she said. “This is the same one I delivered to her, at his request. I would know your grandfather's workmanship anywhere.” 

A murmur rippled around the council. 

“It was her favorite,” Mbali added. “She never took it off, until she lost it.” 

“I have been told,” Shuri said carefully, “that she did not lose it.” 

The white woman opened her mouth again.

Okoye slammed her spear-butt down.

The white woman closed her mouth.

Mbali shook her head. “She would not tell me what became of it. I only know that it was gone when she returned from Europe. I thought it had been stolen from her, and I did not press.” She smiled, her face a galaxy of wrinkles. “It was no fault of hers if it _was_ stolen, the condition she was in.” 

Okoye cleared her throat.

“What condition was that?” Shuri asked. 

“Have you never been told the story, child?”

Shuri swallowed her irritation. “My father did not often talk about his mother.” 

Mbali bobbed her head. “Well, I do not know the whole story—”

“ _I_ do.” 

Shuri lifted her eyes to the white woman, who was staring coolly back at her, her gaze measuring. 

“You are not one of us,” she reminded her prisoner.

“But I was there,” the woman countered. 

“You were not!” Mbali snapped. “No one who was there is alive today! Do not waste our time with your lies!”

“Do you want to hear the story or not?” the woman replied coolly.

Shuri sat back and tilted her head as if to say, _Go on then, and I'll have you killed if I don't like what I hear._ A little _humph_ of approval from Okoye told her she'd at least gotten that part right. 

The woman nodded to her and took a deep breath.

“In 1942,” she began, “Queen Nanali was abducted from her rooms at a chalet outside of St. Moritz, Switzerland. Her abductors were able to take her, despite her training, because there were ten of them—and because she was eight months pregnant with her first child.” 

“She should not have been skiiing,” Mbali grumbled. “Headstrong.” 

“You say you were there,” Shuri pointed out, ignoring the older woman for the moment. “As Mbali said, you're not old enough for that.” 

“I'm considerably older than I look,” the white woman said. “It's a different, longer story. In any case, the queen's abductors were members of Hydra, with which I'm sure you're familiar. They were hoping to trade her safe return for a large supply of weapons-grade vibranium.” She lifted her chin. “I was dispatched to rescue her.” 

“And what was your interest in all this?” 

The silver star gleamed as the woman gathered herself. “I was, at the time, a covert agent tasked with disrupting Hydra operations.” She tilted her head. “I suppose I still am, in a manner of speaking.” 

Shuri looped her fingers in a _go on_ motion.

“I tracked the party to the Austrian border,” the white woman went on. “I managed to kill or disable the Hydra personnel, and I was preparing to contact my superiors when the queen went into labor.” She grimaced. “It wasn't my finest hour, but after a lot of blood and screaming, we managed to safely deliver the child. A boy. She named him T'Chaka. I'm told it means something to do with snow.” 

Mbali's head whipped around. “ _You_ were the midwife?” she demanded. “You delivered our king?”

“I wouldn't go that far,” the white woman said dryly. “Mostly I just held Nanali's hand and pulled when the time came. And cleaned up the blood afterward, which is far more my area of expertise.” She lifted her gaze to the pendant. “Nanali gave that to me and told me to return it to Wakanda if ever I needed help.” She rolled her eyes. “She was laughing a bit when she said it.” 

“And now you come here for help?” Shuri asked.

“To ask it, and to offer it,” the woman replied. She glanced around the chamber. “But the offer is a private one. It's not a matter for an audience.” 

Shuri narrowed her eyes. “I am the leader of Wakanda,” she told the white woman. “What I say to you, I will say in front of the council.” 

“But not what _I_ say to _you_ ,” the woman countered. “Including the matter of how I came to be here, looking the way I do. And,” she added, more loudly, “how you can save your country from its _next_ disaster.”

There was a soft sound beside Shuri, and then Okoye was there, standing even with her. “What is your name?” she demanded.

The woman smiled slightly. “Margaret Carter,” she said. “But you may call me Peggy.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I want Peggy's outfit so much I am literally making it. Well, I'm making the jacket. All the other bits I already have.
> 
> 2\. Thank you, internet, for providing me with Wakandan names so I didn't have to make them up. I am bad at that. 
> 
> 3\. Also, that's absolutely the canon names of Shuri's grandparents, but I'm fudging the timeline a tiny bit because, in the comics, T'Chaka was an adult during WWII and met Steve. It's pretty close to when John Kani was born, though, so I'm making T'Chaka a wartime baby. 
> 
> 4\. Come be my friend on Twitter (onbearfeet) and Instagram (onethingconstant). 
> 
> 5\. Do you want to cuddle my fanfic? Now you can! I have an Etsy shop called OnBearFeet that sells geeky plushies, and I'm running a fundraiser in the next few months. Follow my shop IG (onbearfeet) for pictures of proposed designs. I also take requests. Bucky Bears for everyone!


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